The Effect of Comprehensive Video-Assisted Epilepsy Education on Drug Adherence and Self-Care in People with Epilepsy

Abstract

Background Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder which needs proper drug adherence and follow-up care to control the recurrent seizure events as one of the most common reasons for breakthrough seizures is nonadherence to antiepileptic drugs. In addition to usual therapeutic management, patients are encouraged to involve in epilepsy self-management by understanding the nature of the disease and its control measures to prevent the complications. Methods A single group experimental design (pretest-posttest) was conducted to evaluate the effect of comprehensive video-assisted teaching program on self-care efficacy and level of knowledge of patients with epilepsy. Data was collected by direct interview with Epilepsy Self-Management Scale and epilepsy knowledge questionnaire. A video-assisted teaching covering all aspects of epilepsy was given on the day of pretest. At the interval of 3 months, the level of drug adherence, self-care, and knowledge level were assessed. Results Majority of the study participants (47.1%) belonged to the age group between 19 and 30 years, 54.3% participants were male, majority of them (70%) had tonic-clonic seizure, and 40% of them reported the onset of seizures as above 20 years. Eighty-seven percent of participants had no family history of seizures or epilepsy. Note that 38.6% of the participants had at least one seizure episode/month. Majority of the caregivers were either parents (41.4%) or spouse (48.6%). The study revealed that, following video-assisted teaching, the proportion of participants with adequate knowledge has increased from 14 to 64.3%. Similarly, the percentage of participants who had good drug adherence increased from 52 to 65% and no participant had poor drug adherence. Participants who had high level of self-care increased from 71.4 to 88.6%. Conclusion To overcome the poor drug adherence-related complications, people with epilepsy are to be personally educated adequately to increase the factual information about the condition and their self-care practices.